e other two Frenchmen put on their breastplates and
loaded their guns, but all three kept themselves concealed from the
Iroquois.

The Iroquois had shields of hide stretched on hoop for defensive armor.
Like the Algonquins, they had bows, arrows, and tomahawks.

The Algonquins were only sixty-four, while the Iroquois were more than
two hundred. In splendid order, which was the admiration of Champlain,
the Iroquois advanced to wipe out the Algonquins at a blow.

The Algonquins opened their ranks, and the Iroquois beheld Champlain--a
being in human form, with the sunlight gleaming from his breast. They
were transfixed with astonishment at the apparition. They see him
pointing something at them. There is a lightning flash--a cloud--a roar.
A chief falls dead, and one of the warriors is wounded.

The Iroquois are astounded. For a moment the air is filled with their
arrows. Another lightning flash, a third, and they flee in terror,
running swifter than the deer, to escape from beings which fight with
lightning flashes and hurl invisible thunder-bolts! They were shots
which are still echoing down the ages.

[Illustration: A BATTLE THAT LASTED BUT A MINUTE.]

The battle has lasted a minute, but the Iroquois never will forget it.
More intense their hate of the Algonquins; and it is the beginning of
their implacable enmity to the French: an enmity which is to increase as
time goes on, and which will make them the allies of the English through
the great struggle which is to take place between France and
England--between two races, two languages, two religions, and two
civilizations--for supremacy upon this continent.

Seven years passed. Champlain had been back to France, and had returned.
He was still thinking of the great empire France would one day control
in the Western World. He made his way with a dozen Frenchmen up the
Ottawa, past Lake Nippising, to Lake Huron, then turned south to Lake
Ontario, sailed along the eastern shore with a great war party of
Hurons, to attack their old enemies--the Senecas, tribe of the Iroquois.

It was October. The woods were bright with crimson and magenta hues. The
Iroquois had planted corn and pumpkins, and were gathering the harvest
when the Hurons burst upon them. They fled to their fortified town on
the shore of Lake Canandaigua. It was inclosed by trunks of trees thirty
feet high set in the ground. There was a gallery on which they could
stand and fire or throw stones upon their